


Acrobat

by raedbard



Category: DCU - Comicverse
Genre: 1000-3000 words, M/M, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-06
Updated: 2009-12-06
Packaged: 2017-10-06 12:54:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/53879
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raedbard/pseuds/raedbard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dick turns some cartwheels and thinks some thoughts. (vignette.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Acrobat

**Author's Note:**

> warnings: mentor/student pairing, age-difference (but not underage)

Dick is still an acrobat.

He still turns circles in the air some nights, full of the dark midnight smell that in Gotham is mostly the dead rat stink of the underclass and the bright suggestion of fresh doughnuts in about four hours time.

Dick imagines his feet and hands, the points of his wrists and ankles tearing multicoloured cartwheels in the sky, mysterious fireworks going off over the heads of the skyscrapers, burning up the alleyways, knocking the wiseguys off their perches.

Dick grins: he loves this.

"Stop enjoying yourself and concentrate, please."

Batman's voice sounds like the rumble of a car engine, like the slam of a palm against a table, like the cocking of a shotgun.

"Yes, sir."

Robin's voice sounds like the sparks in the engine, the vibrations shimmering through the tabletop, the vacuum around the path of the bullet; the tear it makes in the night air.

*

The dream that comes to Dick that night is of two guys -- boys, really -- on the starting blocks at a track. Both dark, slight once but laying on strips of muscle by the second, black eyes shellacked with bad memories. Dick flinches, recognises, flashes backward: the smell of gunshot mixed up with cotton candy, the billow of the tent above his head and the sickening fall --

The sound of a gunshot makes him jump but before he even realises that his toes have left the hard stuff he is flying -- a metre ahead already, two, five, he can see the finish line ahead of him, and it's dark suddenly but he's still running, speeding, weaving around lane to lane, drawing figures eights around the other runners with the tracks of his feet and making cartwheel dust in the triple-jump pit. Laughing.

He dances in front of the other boy, across his path; tap steps almost, the spikes on the toes of his sneakers retarding his elegance; making him run faster, harder, better. The other guy barely looks up from the track.

And something in Dick, in the boy he was (is, still is, can't ever run fast enough to escape), bristles. He wants this other boy to see him, notice him. They are running the same race, but Dick doesn't want to beat this kid -- only to catch him; loop his fingers in the back of his shirt and hold on.

Dick is dancing for him. He is somersaulting skill and pride, and need. He'd do a lot more for a smile, which he will never receive.

He wonders what the other guy is dreaming about; what lies the other end of his finishing line. Then thinks he knows pretty well.

Dick wakes up with a start and sits up: his chest smacking the tape and his spikes catching in something unseen, the crack of his chin against the track. He sits, hyperventilating, trying to slow and stop, trying to stop the replays, rubbing his jaw and trying to forget the phantom pain in his thigh muscles.

"Dick?"

"I'm okay."

"You were ... restless."

"Sorry. I was just dreaming. Some really, um, vivid dreams."

"Are you all right?"

"Sure, I'm fine."

"Can you sleep?"

Dick smiles, in the dark. Bruce can't see it, he knows, but Dick thinks maybe Bruce can hear the movement of his muscles -- see the sound of the atoms shifting around the grin he is trying to make brighter than the night.

That's what bats do, right?

"Yeah."

"All right." Bruce's hand rests on Dick's naked shoulder, just for a second. Doesn't squeeze, or pat, or stroke. All that is over with for tonight. "Goodnight again."

Dick crosses the chasm: the two inches that separate his face and Bruce's. Dick presses his mouth against where he thinks Bruce's lips should be, and he's forty per cent accurate -- gets stubble and the hardness of jaw bone and the faint scent of rubber and sweat, because the smell of the suits never washes off, no matter how many showers they take, and at the very edge, the sweetness of Bruce's mouth; that hidden sweetness which Dick half-believes he is only imagining.

There is no corresponding movement. No tenderness. Only the hand on his shoulder that is heavy and unyielding.

And Dick, as usual, as ever, because that's what he's been taught, what Bruce expects, loses his nerve -- or pushes that part of his nerve aside. He shifts away, feeling cold. He murmurs, "Goodnight."

*

Sometimes he thinks Bruce is the darkness itself; the canvas against which all the workings of the night are splattered, and that if he didn't exist perhaps the bad guys would stop dancing and the patterns would stop forming; without Bruce to form and nurture them, raise them up and then cut them down; like Bruce is some kind of dark god measuring their spans and cutting their threads, and without him the chaos would be simple, and Arkham full to bursting.

And sometimes Dick is so clear in his head: he couldn't live in that world, where the night has no pattern and the sparks have gone out because they are no longer needed. Where he has only one name, and no family, and no reason to be anything except lost and lonely. Those nights, when with a dark nod of his head Bruce has approved Dick's request (the only thing he ever asks) and, after, when he's as sure as he ever is that Bruce is asleep, he rests his head in the landscape of Bruce's body, pulling shadows down the mountainsides for blankets and breathing in that nothing smell he loves so much; just Bruce, with the lights off. And he's happy, or at any rate peaceful: no heavy thoughts.

And sometimes he wants the chaos. He wants oblivion. He wants the sweet night air and the easy song his body makes inside it, not the uneven duet they sing together. He wants to forget this bed and everything he has wanted inside it.

And he dreams about running away.

*

Bruce Wayne isn't a violent man, and when they started sleeping together that surprised Dick. He had been expecting bruises on top of his other bruises; stellate marks, five to a set, in places that wouldn't show; sitting very carefully at the breakfast table, in case Alfred started making difficult remarks. Expected that the fight would carry over into this new dimension of life, like it has every other.

But none of that had happened.

Bruce was silent and fearful, and as a consequence Dick experienced his touch as something gentle and fleeting; something he felt like he was dreaming, even as it was happening.

Bruce provided the darkness, and Dick made the sparks.

He laughed, and teased, and kept them both awake -- running on nothing but adrenaline and endorphins -- long after Bruce had called time on the night. He wanted kisses as light as paper, that fell through the night like fireworks: combustive love poetry, because really, deep down, Dick's just a sentimental kid. Bruce burned, well enough. Sometimes Dick even thinks that he gets it too, whatever this is -- this not-the-same-as-love.

Sometimes, not often, Dick catches Bruce looking at him: not an appraisal, not the precursor to a grading of any kind, not the quick status check he always makes before giving an order, not the look that accompanies phrases like _don't leave the dirty dishes in the sink_.

A less honest look than any of those more regular ones. One that shifts and turns its face away, embarrassed. Twisting somehow, in the grasp of something stronger than Bruce Wayne is.

One that burns, slightly, in the light reflected in his eyes.


End file.
